Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The xkcd of 1/24/11 (#851, “Na”), passed on by Facebook friends:

An avalanche of musical repetition.

In no particular order:

Hey hey goodbye. From Wikipedia:

“Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” is a song written and recorded by Paul Leka, Gary DeCarlo and Dale Frashuer, attributed to a then-fictitious band they named “Steam”. It was released under the Mercury subsidiary label Fontana and became a number one pop single on the Billboard Hot 100 in late 1969, and remained on the charts in early 1970.[1] The song’s chorus remains well-known, and is frequently used as a crowd chant at many sporting events generally directed at the losing side when the outcome is all but certain.

Batman! See the posting “Batmaaaan!” of 8/4/12, which includes the theme song.

Katamari Damacy! New to me. From Wikipedia:

Katamari Damacy (塊魂 Katamari Damashii, lit. “clump soul”) is a third-person puzzle-action video game that is developed and published by Namco for the PlayStation 2 video game console. It was first released in Japan, and then later in South Korea and North America.

Hey Jude. From Wikipedia:

“Hey Jude” is a song by the English rock band the Beatles, written by Paul McCartney and credited to Lennon–McCartney. The ballad evolved from “Hey Jules”, a song McCartney wrote to comfort John Lennon’s son, Julian, during his parents’ divorce. “Hey Jude” begins with a verse-bridge structure incorporating McCartney’s vocal performance and piano accompaniment; further instrumentation is added as the song progresses. After the fourth verse, the song shifts to a fade-out coda that lasts for more than four minutes.

“Hey Jude” was released in August 1968 as the first single from the Beatles’ record label Apple Records.

Land of 1,000 Dances. From Wikipedia:

“Land of a Thousand Dances” (or “Land of 1000 Dances”) is a song written and first recorded by Chris Kenner in 1963. The song is famous for its “na na na na na” hook, which Cannibal & the Headhunters added in their 1965 version, which reached number 30 on the Billboard chart. The song was covered by Danny & The Memories. The song’s best-known version was Wilson Pickett’s 1966 recording on his album, which became an R&B #1 and his biggest ever pop hit. Some releases of the song credit Antoine “Fats” Domino as a co-author of the song with Kenner. Domino agreed to record the song in exchange for half of the song’s royalties. Other notable recordings include Roy Orbison, Little Richard, Ted Nugent, The Kingsmen, Patti Smith, Bill Haley & His Comets (which includes a spoken introduction by Big Joe Turner), and Electric Indian.

The Wilson Pickett version:

Then there are children’s taunts. From Wikipedia:

A taunt is a battle cry, a method in hand-to-hand combat, sarcastic remark, gesture, or insult intended to demoralize the recipient, or to anger them and encourage reactionary behaviors without thinking.

… In the Eastern US and modern Britain [a chant] sung to the tune of “Bye, baby Bunting” is insult among children. In the American South this is often used as “Nanny nanny boo-boo” and repeated with words such as “You ca-an’t catch me”.

The taunt in action:

The chant is variously reported as:

nyah nyah-nyah nyaah nyah (where “ah” is either /æ/ or /a/)

næ næ-næ næ: næ

na na-na na: na

which brings us back to na.

This entry was posted on March 28, 2015 at 5:35 am and is filed under Linguistics in the comics, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.